Caili O’Doherty Quintet

Biography

New York-based pianist, composer, arranger and educator, Caili O’Doherty, is known for integrating structures of language in both her compositions and her approach to improvisation. Her recent music focuses on the celebration, preservation, and expansion upon the achievements of jazz’s unsung women heroes.

O’Doherty holds a Bachelor of Music in performance from Berklee College of Music (BM ’13) and a Master of Music in performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College (MM ’19). She has received national awards for piano performance and composition from the ASCAP Foundation and Downbeat Magazine. Praised by All About Jazz for its “exquisitely forged, dramatic and darkly hued pieces”, O’Doherty’s debut release Padme (2015) uses lyrics to give the melodies a natural rhythm of language. Padme was selected as a Downbeat Magazine Editor’s pick and received a 4-star review in All About Jazz. O’Doherty has performed at the Kimmel Center, SF Jazz, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Panama Jazz Festival, Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, concert halls throughout China and UNESCO First International Jazz Day in Paris, as well as two US State Dept. supported tours to Colombia and Togo and Benin in West Africa. Currently performing throughout NYC and touring as a bandleader and side-musician, O’Doherty also works in the education department at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) as a piano accompanist for the WeBop early childhood jazz education program. She leads educational performances in New York City schools about jazz, democracy and civil rights as a bandleader for JALC’s Jazz for Young People program. O’Doherty has been a faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop since 2012 and Litchfield Jazz Camp since 2015.

In 2021, she received a Chamber Music America Presenters Consortium for Jazz Grant in partnership with the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, New Orleans Jazz Museum, and Alabama Women in Jazz Festival to present her newest project, “Caili O’Doherty: Celebrating Lil Hardin Armstrong”, featuring her arrangements of compositions by pianist, composer, and vocalist Lil Hardin Armstrong. O’Doherty is releasing her second album as a bandleader, and first release with Posi-Tone Records later in 2022, followed by a U.S. CD release tour.